


Open Up the Door and Let Me In

by ishie



Category: Push (2009)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:39:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick didn't bother asking how they'd tracked him down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Open Up the Door and Let Me In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mynuet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mynuet/gifts).



> Mynuet, I couldn't quite get Ezra to show up, but Liz tried her best. Happy Yuletide!
> 
> All my thanks to S-who-will-never-see-this for the "whale"-hunting tips; and to L and the Js for the beta <333
> 
> Title from Hospital Ships' "Love or Death".

_A month from now_

Rank and sweaty from the oppressive heat, Nick almost dropped his key before he managed to get it in the lock. The blue-white lights buzzing overhead turned his skin the color of fish guts and unnatural shadows jumped in his peripheral vision. He felt like he was shaking off a massive push, bigger than anything Division had thrown at him, instead of just stumbling home from another day in a way too long streak of honest days' work. 

Early mornings were spent breaking down the day's catch in a cramped, stuffy kitchen at one of the bayside hotels, where sunburnt tourists sucked down obscene amounts of alcohol every night. Afternoons and most nights he worked for Moddy—another Hong Kong refugee. Moddy had a tiny business, making minor repairs to the glass-bottomed boats that the same tourists used to gawk at the reefs, but at least it was enough to keep Nick in beer.

 _Screw this_ , he thought. _I gotta find a game before I cut my own throat._

After a day being blinded by the sun reflecting off the bay, all he wanted was to stand under the lukewarm trickle of water in the tiled corner that passed for a shower and down the last icy cold beer lingering in his fridge. He stripped off his dirty clothes and did just that, not even bothering to flip on a light against the deepening gloom. 

The water was slightly warmer than normal. It might have even passed for hot if the temperature outside had dropped by more than a degree since midday. Nick stood under the weak stream, tipping back the can until he was woozy from the rush of cheap beer on top of the exhaustion. He rubbed a damp, musty towel over his hair and tumbled into bed. Just like every night for the past six weeks, he meant to get as much sleep as possible until it was time to start all over again.

He didn't notice the passport lying on his bedroll until it stuck to his leg. 

It was Canadian, the passport, with a navy cover and gold embossing. Flipping through, Nick saw at least half a dozen arrival and departure stamps, matching visa labels stapled to the pages, all within the last six months. His picture was pasted inside, somehow, next to the name Murray Moranis. Apparently he was from Ottawa now.

Nick flipped the light back on and pulled on a pair of jeans before checking out the tiny one-room flat. Nothing looked out of place. The windows were locked. The bamboo mat on the floor still flipped up at one corner, just the way he'd left it. The old plastic phone on the counter still had its usual coating of dust.

Even the slim wad of bills he kept wedged under the gooseneck lamp was still there—easy enough pickings to keep casual would-be thieves from looking any harder. The rest of his stash was safe, too, rolled in plastic and stuffed into a cloudy jar of pickled daikon at the back of the tiny fridge.

So, it was just the passport. That was the only thing different.

He flipped through it again, hoping for a note that might tell him who had made it, and who had left it. Not for the first time, Nick wished his power ran more to the sniffing end of the spectrum. He wouldn't have much use for it around here, though. He'd picked the building for just that reason—quiet didn't begin to cover the feel of this neighborhood. It was almost out of his meager price range, or it would be if he didn't pick up a new income sometime soon. But it had more security than he'd been comfortable seeing since he had learned to mistrust the sight of cameras and guards. 

After all these years, he was so tired of running, tired of hiding. Tired of waiting for another shoe to drop. For an unexpected note or an unwelcome visitor or a lightning bolt streaking down to strike him dead. And now that he didn't have to, he meant to take advantage of everything he'd spent his life trying to avoid.

When the phone rang, Nick picked up before he'd consciously made the decision to answer.

"Prague," a woman said when his customary greeting got stuck in his throat. Her _R_ was thick, clumsy, but she sounded as American as he did. "Thursday morning. Air France."

He didn't recognize the voice, but then he didn't expect to.

"Is this it?" he asked. He wasn't sure what he was even asking, but he could hear the excitement in his voice.

There was a slight delay—dead air; not a pause. It wasn't a local call, then—before the woman on the phone answered. She was amused, at least. "It's something," she said, a smile in her voice.

He didn't bother asking how they'd tracked him down. It didn't seem like he would still be on anyone's radar, not with Division in total disarray, but after spending most of his life only minutes ahead of everyone it was second-nature to expect it.

"Who wants me there? 'Cause I gotta say, not a big fan of whoever named me after a couple of Ghostbusters."

"Ah, now, that would be telling." 

"It would, wouldn't it? I say you should go for it."

She made a soft noise, a sigh maybe or a smothered laugh. But all she said was, "Thursday morning. Don't forget."

Nick scratched the back of his neck after the woman hung up and studied the passport again. He could always run. There was a lifetime between now and Thursday, and a few hundred thousand đồng in the daikon—enough to get him on any ship headed out of the bay. If it was someone at Division trying to bring him in, they wouldn't go for all this cloak and dagger stuff. They'd send an agent, or three, to sweet-talk or threaten him into traveling under his own name, or totally invisible.

Prague, the woman said. It sounded old, and cold.

\---

"We were all half in love with him, I think. Me more than anybody else."

Cassie had heard it all before. She'd heard it so many times that sometimes it felt like this story was the only one she ever heard. 

"I know, Mom."

"He was a good man. Don't ever let anyone tell you he wasn't."

Who would? No one remembered Ezra Lowe except her mom, and her mom barely even talked to her, let alone anyone else.

"He could have gotten you all killed!" It was useless to argue against Liz's memory of the saintly Ezra. It never stopped Cassie from trying, though.

"No, we got _him_ killed. All of us. He wouldn't let it go. Wouldn't run. Told me to run but he wouldn't go. I hated him for a long time. After. Once we figured out what he'd done."

Cassie twisted off another piece of her bagel and popped it in her mouth. She hadn't been hungry for days but now all she could think about was cramming as much food in her mouth as she could. As fast as she could, enough to keep her going for a day or two. 

Eight years later, and she still felt like running. Every morning.

Liz's fingers danced on the edge of the couch, twirling a loose thread around and around and around. The vacant look was starting to steal back onto her face. Washing away the bright spark of remembrance in her eyes, turning her back into the wreck that had to be carried out of Division's labs. 

Desperate to keep her, just for a few more minutes, Cassie blurted out, "Do you still hate him?"

The smile might have been blinding once. Now it was framed with chapped lips and missing teeth.

"Nick reminds me of him." 

It was too late to pull her back to reality, then. "You've never even met Nick, Mom. Remember? He was already gone when I got you out."

Liz sighed. "I remember. I'll meet him soon, won't I? He promised me, Cass."

Nick had never done anything of the kind—could never have done it—but this Cassie had stopped arguing.

"If you say so. I'm going to go finish getting ready. Nayeli said she'd come over to see you this morning, okay? Why don't you finish your breakfast and see if there's anything on TV?"

The sound of the TV followed Cassie down the short hallway to her tiny bedroom tucked behind the kitchen. She hurried into her work clothes and pulled the elastic out of her hair. Short and dark, it hung in uneven sections around her face—supposedly a look that emphasized her cheekbones and brought out her eyes. Neither of which Cassie cared all that much about. But it kept the hair off her neck and out of her eyes, and she thought it made her seem older and somehow less fragile than her undersized frame looked otherwise.

Cassie always hoped she'd grow into the body her mom had had when she was the same age, all curves and round thighs. But her childhood had its claws in her too deep. Too many skipped meals and too many nights spent running when she should have been sleeping. Cassie would never be taller than when she was fifteen, would never have any breasts to speak of when she wasn't wearing the right bra, and whatever extra fat managed to stick to her frame didn't stay long. She always looked tired and pale, even in the height of the desert summer.

She put on enough makeup to cover the shadows under her eyes, then added more. It looked slightly ridiculous in her bright bedroom, but it would play well in the dimmer lights at the hotel. Cassie still loved color, but she couldn't put it in her hair anymore. Too conspicuous. Too memorable. And too many drinks made most of her customers see it as an invitation.

Liz looked away from the TV when Cassie came back in the room. Her free hand flew to her mouth. The other pulled harder on the loose string wrapped around it, turning her skin white with the pressure and lack of blood. 

"Oh! You shouldn't have cut your hair. Oh, my baby, oh, Cassie," she crooned. "Why did you cut it? All that beautiful hair! What if the baby doesn't know who you are?"

She started to cry. Abandoned the string for her own lank hair, clutched it like she would tear it all out again. 

It was getting harder for Cassie to tell the difference between Liz reacting to a vision and the times when she lost the thread of everyday living again and looped back to old memories. She was so tired of trying to sift through her mother's words, looking for the kernels of truth. 

She dropped to her knees in front of the couch and leaned in, pressing her weight against her mother's bony shins. Trying to tether her back to reality again. To the sunlight splashed over dingy gray walls. The faint smell of exhaust that hung in the air, the sound of traffic on the highway behind the apartment complex. 

"It's okay, Mom. It's fine! There's no baby to worry about, just us. Look," she said, smoothing down her hair until it lay flat against her head and neck. "Don't I look just like a model? Isn't that what you said? Remember?"

Liz sniffed, still clinging to her own hair. "You're prettier than any model, baby."

"Not as pretty as you were when you were my age."

"No," she said with a ghost of a smile. "I wish you could have seen me then, Cassie, like I saw you."

\---

Nick never found out what Prague was like. He never even made it out of the airport. A middle-aged woman in a dark blazer and skirt met him before he'd taken more than a few steps away from the gate. Her hair was swept up in a stiff-looking bun, a bright scarf tied at her throat. A web of scar tissue peeked above it when she turned her head. She handed him a thick envelope and smiled widely, her teeth unnaturally white and straight.

"Enjoy your trip to Brazil, sir," she said in heavily accented English. 

"You gotta be fucking kidding me."

But she was too far away to hear. Inside the envelope was another passport—dark red, marked with words in a language he didn't recognize. His picture pasted inside, again. A goofy smile, his eyes focused away from the camera. Dread pooled in the pit of his stomach. His hair hadn't been that short since Adelaide. And no one knew he'd been in Adelaide. No one.

This passport was pristine, not a single stamp. And he was still Murray Moranis. 

Where could he go but where they wanted him to, though? The gulf between his stumbling Vietnamese and the gate agents' halting English had been wide enough to get his backpack checked instead of carried on—who knew where it would wind up? He wasn't sure it had even traveled with him to Prague. All he had left of the wad of daikon-scented money was what was in his pockets. Barely enough to buy lunch.

By the time they landed in Rio, Nick felt like he'd been turned inside out. His eyes burned. He was greasy and dried-out at the same time, and so tired he could have dropped to the psychedelic carpet and slept for a week. For hours, all the way across the Atlantic, he'd jerked awake, again and again, the ghosts of Bleeders past ringing in his bones.

There was a man waiting for him outside the customs area. Short and dark, he had stooped shoulders and a round belly barely restrained by a thin cotton shirt. Nick's backpack was already slung over his shoulder. 

"You come with Beto. Now!" he said with a short wave, turning away without checking to see if Nick would follow. He limped toward the exits.

It wasn't like Nick had a lot of options. He followed him out of the building, past a line of idling taxis and around a bus belching thick gray smoke. After a few minutes, the man stopped at a white hatchback and dropped the backpack through one of the open windows.

"In!" he said with another wave when Nick didn't move fast enough. "Wiper get you? In!"

\---

"Oh, thank God. Cassie! I can't find Coline, and there's a leak in one of the showers in Ambassador. Maintenance says it'll be six hours until they get it fixed, _maybe_ less, but the Bermans will be here by ten. Should we put them in a villa? He's a golfer, so maybe..."

Apparently it was going to be that kind of afternoon. Cassie was barely three feet inside the building after a long and mostly unproductive lunch trying to get in the good graces of the new director of the Nevada Film Office, and her eyes hadn't even adjusted to the gloomy service corridor yet.

"No, hang on. The Bermans? Bert and Joyce. Okay, they had a villa the first time out and Coline almost didn't get them back. Keep them in the Ambassador, tell Treño there's an extra two grand for him this week if he gets it done and cleaned up by nine. And, uh," she pretended to think for a minute while she let the vision roll in, "let's see if—who's in the cabaret this month? Richard? Can we get him to do an accidental meet in the elevator? Bottle service on the house if he gets them to join him for a drink before they get to their floor."

And that was just the beginning. The Babylon was enormous, one of the last old-school casinos to be converted to the new all-inclusive resort style that had taken over the Strip. It was also more work than Cassie ever thought anyone would trust her with. That she was good at it seemed like a miracle. Especially given where she'd been when Coline first found her.

They'd been living with one of Pinky's contacts in Nogales when Liz fell into a vision about an old friend. Within days they were moving into an empty apartment in the building Nayeli managed. 

Cassie still didn't know how they knew each other, or even if Nayeli was a psychic, too. What she did know was that Nayeli was happy to check in on Liz as many times a day as she needed, and that her mom had slowly—finally—started to lift herself out of the confusion that had kept her trapped for years. Cassie was so relieved to have that weight lifted off her shoulders that she'd finally started acting her age. It spiralled out of control quickly, the way things usually turned to shit once she showed up. Drinking for fun turned into needing it to blot out the visions that came fast and hard in a city of a billion possible futures. Craving it, until drinking wasn't enough, and she turned to whatever else she could get her hands on to make the world go dark.

If it hadn't been for one person who noticed—let alone cared—about the half-dead girl being passed through the back door of a club, she wouldn't have made it out at all. Coline had been working her way up the ranks at the Babylon, and she took Cassie under her wing once she dried out. A job as a gofer quickly turned into more when she saw how Cassie could anticipate and deflect almost any disaster.

It was amazing, being able to solve problems instead of always being at the root of them. It was a bigger rush than anything else she'd ever tried.

By the time Cassie's shift was over, she was exhausted. Exhilarated, too. It always took a while for her to come down from the endless stream of split second decisions. Trying to figure out what move to make next, how to keep all the moving parts _moving_. 

The only real problem was that the higher Coline climbed, the farther she pulled Cassie along with her. And at their level, there really wasn't any such thing as a job well done. It was a job that could be done well, but it was never actually over. She had time off, sure, time to spend at home with Liz, or sleeping, or trying to have some kind of social life.

But everything came back to the job.

Coline called her around sunrise. Nothing too unusual about that. The woman thrived on caffeine and sheer nerve, but she tended to be more considerate of everyone else's need for sleep, which made the time of the call slightly more distressing than the message.

"Fucking Tony at the fucking Bellagio stole another one! Mick saw him personally escort Feodor Botkoveli ringside just before the opening bell tonight."

Or not. Cassie winced. The Babylon had been actively courting Botkoveli for at least a year, with one of the club hosts finally getting a nibble less than a week earlier. Coline had staked her net on reeling him in, and Cassie missed the turn that took him to the Bellagio instead. 

She groped for her shoes in the dark. "You want me to figure out how to get him back."

Coline sighed. "No. Fuck him. He only dropped about five grand at the tables afterward. Who bets that small after a prize fight?"

"If you don't want him back, why are you calling me? It's sleepytime for us mortals, you know."

"Hey, Mick texted me last night from the afterparty. You're lucky I let you go home at all. Plus, we've got a fresh one coming in this week. Just got the call. Private jet, landing at Henderson tomorrow afternoon."

Cassie closed her eyes. She got a flash of bright sunlight, a G-5 with Brazilian tags. Nothing else. Hopefully that meant it would go smoothly. But smooth or not, anything would be better than losing another one to Fucking Tony.

"He's gold-flagged, Cass. Out of Rio. I need to make sure someone I trust picks him up."

"Send Frankie. He's ready for something a little more challenging than linebackers, and he's dying to get his hands on a gold flag."

A quick snort of breath meant Coline didn't agree. "I want you. You're my guy. I'm uploading the file as we speak."

"You're giving me a new car for this."

"Whatever you say. Pick it up on the way tomorrow. Hey, I gotta go, find me when you get in this afternoon. And tell your mom I said hi. It's been too long."

\---

The first thing Nick did when he woke up was wonder where the hell he was. This bed was too soft, and too lacking in the particular odor of fish guts and motor oil that permeated his, no matter how often he washed his bedroll.

It came back in flashes: the cracked leather seat under his hands, moonlight shining on dark waves. The driver, stoop-shouldered. Beto. Helping Nick out of the car and up the steps into the lobby of a fancy hotel, all bright lights and gold walls. Then the elevator, where Nick tried not to curl up on the floor, and then Beto was tilting him into a bed and dropping the backpack on the bedspread next to him. Something muttered too fast for Nick to catch it, and then nothing until now.

Rio. That was it. A day ago he'd been landing in Prague, and the day before that he was waving goodbye to Moddy in Nha Trang. 

Jesus, three days. No wonder it felt like he'd replaced his tongue with an old sock.

He crawled out of bed, groaning when his whole body protested. Injuries he didn't even remember came screaming back to complain. He slammed the side of his knee into the bedside table, knocking off a paper-wrapped package that was sitting on top. The label on top wasn't meant for him, though. It was addressed to Cassie.

"Then who the fuck sent me here?" he asked the empty room.

The bathroom was nice, tile and fixtures and windows. Or something. He barely noticed. He pissed for what felt like a week, almost nodding off halfway through, then downed six glasses of water with hardly a pause for breath. By the time he was done, he had to pee again. He washed his hands with the fruity smelling bar of soap then pitched it into the trash. If he had time, he'd hit the nearest corner shop and pick up something that smelled a little more like him.

Back in the room, he yawned and scratched the healing scrape on his stomach where he'd caught a loose board the week before, when his concentration was broken by someone shouting outside the shop. The board shot out from where he'd had it waiting, just missing flattening him against the wall when his mental hold reasserted itself.

The floor to ceiling windows looked out over a sprawl of glass and steel that tangled with bright green trees before sloping down to meet the beaches. The moon was high overhead again, picking out the dark swooping shapes of bats as they picked off insects mid-flight. Either he hadn't slept long or he'd slept away an entire day.

The package was where he'd left it, Cassie's name still on top instead of his own. Underneath, he found a couple of keycards—for the room he was in, presumably, and a neat stack of Brazilian currency. 

There was a note, too. 

_Mr Gant, when you have rested, please ring for a meal—anything you like. Beto will return shortly, as I am sure he has already told you. If no complications arise, you will be on your way again in a matter of hours._

Nick groaned. Maybe he was dead and this was hell. Instead of a fiery pit and devils with pitchforks, he was doomed to wander the skies forever.

He pulled off his t-shirt and dropped his jeans before crawling back into the cool, clean sheets. The longer he slept, the longer he had to think of a way out. It wasn't a bad place to cool his heels, at least. Miles better than any of the places he'd called home in the past couple of decades. The only one that hadn't completely sucked was Kira's apartment in New York. 

Both of them, actually. 

They'd tried again, after Division. Both of them still running even when they promised they weren't. 

It was hard for anyone to admit when they'd made a mistake. For them it was almost impossible. Coney Island was a lifetime ago, swept away with the tide, but still they clung. 

"It was real, wasn't it, Nick?" Kira would whisper against his shoulder late at night.

"It felt real," was all he could say. "But everything does."

When the new Division came calling, with promises that it was all new, all good, Kira was ready to answer. She dressed up in her suits and pulled back her hair, and off she went. Making a difference, she said.

His father had believed that once. His mother, too. It got them both killed, and almost everyone else he'd ever known. 

And still he stayed.

"You could do a lot of good," she coaxed. "It's not like it was. It _won't_ be."

Nick would have tried, for her. But the doubts kept nagging. How could he ever know that what he believed wasn't what she wanted him to believe? How could he trust that she wouldn't push him?

In the end, he thought, he just couldn't take the chance. 

By the time he washed up in Adelaide, he knew it.

\---

Cassie watched from the lounge as the jet slowed to a stop. Within seconds, the ground crew had the rolling stairs secured and the cargo hold opened. They pulled out just one bag, small and dark. She put away her phone and smoothed her skirt. No entourage, then. Not a great sign. With most of the clientele Coline courted, there was a direct correlation between hangers-on and the amount of money dropped at the tables. Unless this guy was the serious and dedicated type, the Babylon wasn't going to see much of a bump.

She thanked the lounge hostess with an extravagant tip and her card—a new girl, very pretty, hopefully very good about passing on any gossip she picked up around the field—and hurried out to greet the new arrival before he had a chance to catch his breath.

He was just stepping out of the plane when she stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked up, her eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses.

" _You're_ my whale?" she blurted out before she could stop herself. _Fuck_. 

The man froze for a second, pulling on the hem of his untucked shirt as if hoping to make it longer. Cassie had already seen the slight roll at his waist when the wind whipped it away from his body, but that wasn't what she'd meant. 

_Nick_. What the hell was Nick doing on _anybody's_ gold-flag list? How had she not seen any of this?

" _Cassie!_ " He jogged down the steps and wrapped his arms around her, picking her up off the ground in the process and grinding her sunglasses into the bridge of her nose.

"I'm not your anything, I don't think," he said when he finally put her down. "And, okay, maybe I've been drinking a little too much but there's no need to call me—"

"No! I mean, you're not... You're... Murray _Moranis_?"

"You picked it out!"

"No! I didn't even know you were _you_ until just now!"

"And here I thought you were this great and powerful Watcher." He grinned, a few new lines joining the ones she remembered, baked into his face by sun and wind. "I knew you were you, though."

Nick took his bag from the uniformed attendant with a nod and rooted around in it for a minute before coming up with a small package wrapped in brown paper. He handed it to her, label side up.

_Casi Homes_  
 _Las Vegas, USA_

"That's not even how you spell my name."

"Yeah, I know. That's how it was spelled when I got it though."

Someone cleared their throat, and Cassie suddenly remembered where they were. Shit, if it got back to Coline that Nick wasn't who she thought he was before they had time to do any damage control...

She forced a laugh and wrapped her hand around Nick's bicep. "Mr Moranis, I heard you were a practical joker!" she said, loud enough for her voice to carry. "And you got me good!"

Nick played along, warming to whatever she said as she practically dragged him across the tarmac, smiling widely and gesturing with her free hand at the Vegas skyline the whole time. 

"Just don't say anything else until we get to the car, okay?" she said as soon as they were out of earshot. 

"No problem, complete stranger! Tell me more about the fascinating cultural history of this desert paradise, will you?"

Cassie just barely restrained the urge to thump him on the back of the head. 

"So, what's the plan?" Nick asked as soon as the car doors closed. 

"There is no plan," she told him. "I literally had no idea you were coming here."

"Yeah, well, neither did I, before yesterday."

"What?"

"Long story. Buy me a beer and I'll tell you." He patted his stomach. "Okay, a light beer, maybe."

He reached over and tapped the package she was still holding. "Open it up, see if the plan's in there."

"I don't drink anymore," she told him absently, running her hands over the flaps of brown paper and plucking the twine that held it together, hoping something about it would trigger a quick glimpse. Just a taste, even. Something to go on. "Don't you know it's bad for your complexion?"

"Speak for yourself, sister. I'm flawless."

Cassie snorted. She could practically feel Nick's answering grin on the skin of her cheek. He radiated so much heat and energy it was like sitting next to a torch. 

She pulled the paper off carefully, half expecting something evil to start bubbling up once it was exposed to the air. Instead, she found a thin cardboard box with folded papers inside. Cassie pulled them out, one by one. Heavy paper, the good kind for drawing, not the thin stuff she preferred.

"Are those yours?"

She opened the first one. It was unmistakably Nick, with his arms thrown up in the air in victory. Next to him, the outline of a newspaper, the headline reading _$6 Million Jackpot!_ and a sequence of numbers. 

"No, not mine. This one might be yours now." She handed it over, watched as he peered at it as though secrets lurked in each pencil line. Secrets that only he could decode.

The light through the tinted windows was still bright enough to pick out the warm blond highlights in his hair, the shine of his scalp where it was starting to thin. Cassie didn't bother to act like she wasn't staring when he looked up and caught her.

"You did promise me a payday like this once. Remember?"

That made her flush. She remembered how cocky she'd pretended to be, terrified the whole time that he would go back on his promise. That she'd have to take on Division alone. That she'd never see her mom again.

"You okay, Cass?"

"Fine. Let's see what else is in here."

The next paper had a rough pencil sketch on the outside, a woman with light hair holding a baby to her shoulder. Inside was a different portrait, this one done in ink. A different woman. Long dark hair, a toddler sitting on her lap. She flipped the paper over, again and again. She knew the style, almost as well as she knew her own. Clean lines and clear faces, where hers would have been scribbles and stick-figures.

"My mom did this one," she told Nick, tracing the pencilled woman with a short polished nail. "I'm pretty sure that's her, holding me."

"And the other side? It looks like you. Well, you a while ago, or a while from now." He feathered the short, jagged section of hair that fell against her cheek between his fingers.

Cassie didn't want to talk to him about the second picture. She'd seen the same thing, a couple of times. Just a quick flash of herself and the baby, like she was looking at her reflection or a video. No context for any of it, though. No details to tie the scene to any particular time or place.

She carefully folded the double-sided picture and slid it back into the box, then picked up the third piece of paper. It was much smaller than the other two, with ragged edges like it had been torn from a larger piece. It was a beautifully detailed lotus, each leaf delicately shaded, the stamen curling around the seed pod like they were blowing in a soft breeze. 

"I don't get it." She handed the paper to Nick. "It's just a flower. Do you have any idea what it means?"

He coughed. "Uh, it seems familiar, maybe. I'll let you know."

Cassie shrugged. "Not much of a plan so far."

"What else is in the box?"

She felt inside again, found another folded piece of paper she'd missed the first time. There was an envelope tucked inside it, _For Cassie_ neatly printed on the front. As soon as her fingers brushed across it, images started flashing through her head. Her mom, bowing her head over a lacquered table. A Stitcher cracking his knuckles.

Cassie dropped it before the vision could take over. The note folded around it was clean, hardly even registering in her hand. There was no choice here, no changes rippling down through the future. All she could do was read it.

 _I don't know what is inside this envelope,_ it began. _Your mother sent it to me years ago and I have kept it safe. Don't worry about her, if you can. She said to send this now, with the American, so you would know you will be in good hands. All things must pass, she wrote. You would know what that meant. You have a lot of a friends, Cassie Holmes. All three of you do. More than you could ever meet in a lifetime. She'll be home soon._

Without saying anything, Cassie folded up the note around the envelope and put them back in the box. She twisted in her seat to put it all in the backseat, then started the car. She didn't need to read the letter. If her mom was saying goodbye, then that was it.

"You all right? You look like you just saw a ghost."

"I think I did. It was from my mom. She's saying goodbye."

Nick wrapped his hand around the gearshift, keeping Cassie from putting the car in gear. "Where's she going?"

"To get better, I think. She'll be back when she is."

"Do you want to go find her? Maybe it's not too late to stop her."

He looked so serious, like he was waiting for her to give the word to unleash hell. Everything else fell away, all the years they'd been apart. Maybe they could be just Nick and Cassie again, together against the world. She could just give in and ask him to help, again, to track Liz down if it was too late already. 

Or she could let it drop. They could work out what the drawings meant, why her mom had moved so many pieces in place just to draw Nick back into her world. For once, Cassie didn't have the slightest idea how it was supposed to go.

"You know what? Let's go get something to eat, first. We'll figure out the rest later."

Nick could have argued, could have talked her into just about anything at that point. She felt untethered, like the slightest breeze would send her flying off into any of a thousand directions. But Nick just let go of the gearshift and tapped his fingers on the lotus that still lay in his lap. 

"Yeah, all right. Let's do that. Your treat?"

"Yeah," Cassie said, with a grin so big she thought it might split her lip. "My treat."

\---

_Twenty-five years ago_

The diner was crowded. Families traveling home for the holidays spilled out of every booth, shouting and laughing. By the bathrooms, a little girl squirmed and squalled and threw herself sideways, twisting almost all the way out of the high chair as it grabbed for a jug of maple syrup on the table. One of the older boys saw it and gave a shout as he swept the jug out of the way. The girl shrieked with outrage and threw herself in the other direction. A red-headed woman with a coffee stain spreading on her Santa Claus sweatshirt swept a hand over the toddler's matching hair, calming her in seconds.

Liz started sketching, only half-aware that her hand was moving. When she saw the crumpled fenders taking shape, she scratched out the drawing and ripped the paper out of the notebook. Some things she didn't want to see.

Christmas Eve, and she had nowhere to go. No family to visit, no friends to call. Not yet. There would be enough of that later.

The bells over the door jangled and a rush of cold air followed. Liz huddled deeper into her coat and caught the waitress' eye for a refill. 

"Gettin' awful cold out there," the woman said to Liz in a booming voice, the kind that should have been belting holiday hits out of the speakers overhead instead of repeating all-day breakfast orders. "How about I bring you some more eggs, too? Need all the protein you can get on a day like today."

When she hesitated, trying to remember what was left of the rapidly dwindling contents of the wallet stuffed in her bra, the woman sighed. Her heavy gold eye-shadow was leaking into the web of lines around her eyes and flecks of mascara dotted her right cheekbone. "It's Christmas, girl. Just say yes to the damn eggs and tell me 'happy holidays'."

Liz never had caught the knack of saying no graciously.

By the time she finished, half the tables had cleared out and refilled with new families. At the counter sat a solid line of men in nearly matching jackets and hats, jeans straining at the seams or hanging loose from narrow hips. She'd watched those seats empty at least half a dozen times since she sat down, but it seemed like it was the same guys sitting there the whole time.

"You got a ride to where you're going?" the waitress asked as she came around with the coffee again. 

Liz thought of the drawings folded in the bag next to her. The baby, wrapped in a soft blanket at her shoulder, and the laughing girl with streaks of orange on her hands and in her hair, her pointed chin covered in a raw red scrape. They'd brought her this far, but she didn't know where to go next.

"I was thinking about maybe staying here in town for a few weeks. Know anybody who's hiring?"

"Mike's always looking for someone out at the bowling alley. Can't keep none of them college kids more than a couple of weeks. Might try there first. They're open late tonight. Ask for him or Bobby." 

_Bobby_. Liz turned toward the wall, pretending to fumble for something in her bag as a new future unrolled in flashes. Bowling pins crashing. Dark blue hair stuck up in spikes. A dank basement apartment with hissing radiators. Music so loud it felt like her heart would explode. A soft, well-worn t-shirt under her hand, hot skin against her lips. Choking on a cloud of hairspray. A young man with a pointed chin smiling up at her. 

Pulling out a pen like that had been her reason for turning away, she scribbled a quick IOU and ripped out the page. "Here," she told the waitress. "For the eggs, and the advice. I'll be back as soon as I get paid."

"Fair enough." She tapped her nametag. "Tell Mike that Cherie'll kick his ass if he doesn't at least try you out for a week."

"I will. Thank you, for everything."

Cherie waved her off. "Please, it's just eggs. It's not like you owe me your first-born."

She laughed as she walked away, shaking her head, but Liz was already bent over the notebook again. Her hand flew across the page as another vision slammed into her. Broken teeth and the desert sun. The little girl was a woman grown, but still so tiny that Liz's heart clenched. "I'm sorry, baby," she wrote. "I'll be back, and I'll be better. Don't worry about me. It's time I took care of myself for a change. I've always loved you more than anything in the world."

She sealed it in one of the few envelopes left in her bag. _For Cassie_ she printed on the front. 

After a minute or two, the fresh coffee cooling untouched at her elbow, she added another line to the back of the envelope. 

_Tell Nick not to buy the boat._


End file.
